


don't you weep (pretty baby)

by Kyele



Series: i'll fly away [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Reverse Flash Iris West - Freeform, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/pseuds/Kyele
Summary: “You’re going to be cruel,” Barry says, with the sudden penetrating insight that makes him so dangerous in the wrong hands. “You don’t want me to see.”Set in an AU where Iris West (still and always played by Candice Patton) is, and has always been, an alternate-Earth bodysnatched version of Eobard Thawne; and in which she, along with a Harrison Wells who is also Eobard Thawne, thoroughly enjoy sharing their Barry Allen between them. Or did, before the prejudice of the 21st century reared its ugly head. Eobard rectifies this.





	don't you weep (pretty baby)

“Find something quiet here at home to occupy yourself with today,” Eobard tells Barry, one morning over breakfast. “Don’t go out if you can avoid it. Don’t watch TV or visit online news sites.”

Barry pauses in the middle of flipping pancakes. He’s taken to cooking more elaborate meals, now that time is hanging so heavy on his hands; two weeks have gone by since the scandal storm had broken, and he’s still on paid leave. Eobard regrets that it has taken him this long to pull today’s event together. Barry still smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes the way it should. And he’s losing some of the stubborn flexibility that makes him _him_. He yields to Eobard’s and Iris’ directives far too easily, lately. He makes far too few suggestions. Eobard wonders, this morning, if Barry will even ask Eobard _why_ Eobard wants him to stay home and avoid the news.

But Barry is still able to surprise him. “You’re going to be cruel,” Barry says, with the sudden penetrating insight that makes him so dangerous in the wrong hands. “You don’t want me to see.”

Eobard, sitting at the breakfast table with a glass of orange juice, finds the fortitude to nod simply.

“You don’t like me knowing you can be cruel. It’s like you think I can have forgotten it, somehow.”

Barry turns from the pancakes. He picks up a kitchen knife – he’d cut strawberries, earlier, for the pancakes – and just holds it. Eobard looks at it, the way it sits in Barry’s hand, the way the light glints off it.

“I know you can’t forget,” Eobard says, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect you from it.”

“Is that all you’re protecting me from today?” Barry asks. “The knowledge that you can be cruel?”

“Hopefully, a great deal more than that.” Eobard meets Barry’s gaze steadily. Makes it a request. “Please. Stay home today. Keep to yourself.”

“I won’t stand for being kept in the dark.”

“I don’t want to keep you in the dark,” Eobard says, willing him to understand. “I just don’t want you to watch it alone.”

Barry studies him. Eobard doesn’t waver.

“All right,” Barry says, setting the kitchen knife back down. He nods, then turns back to his pancakes. They’re starting to smoke, but with super-speed it only takes a second to flip them all.

Eobard gets himself some more coffee. Barry fills a bowl with chopped fruit, and starts to hum.

* * *

The tenth floor of STAR Labs is full to bursting. Everything on this floor is for show – a mock laboratory simulating scientists at work, please-touch copies of breakthrough technology (modified for safety, of course), framed patents and awards and glowing newspaper articles on the wall. Sometimes this place is filled with investors. Sometimes it’s filled with customers. And sometimes, as today, it’s filled with media.

Eobard smiles for the cameras.

“Dr. Wells, what an amazing new invention,” a reporter gushes from his elbow. A microphone appears in his face, and a sly note of false surprise enters the reporter’s voice. “And you personally had the idea for it? You personally worked on the early prototypes?”

Eobard glances at the reporter – female, bleached blond hair, green eyes, Botox, low-cut dress – _Brittney,_ his mental rolodex supplies. “Why, yes, Brittney,” he says, all smooth astonishment. “You’ve covered us for years; surely you recall that I _always_ handle early prototypes personally.”

“Oh, well, you’ve had so much on your mind lately,” Brittney burbles, “so many _claims_ on your _time_ , that naturally I wondered if, perhaps, someone else…”

Eobard’s smile shows teeth. “Now, I’m surprised at you, Brittney!” he says convivially. “After all, _you_ manage two boyfriends on the side, plus you’ve got a husband – and it doesn’t seem to be affecting your career at all!”

Brittney drops the microphone. Behind her, the cameraman chokes. Notably, though, it’s laughter the cameraman’s suppressing, not outrage – and he _doesn’t_ stop recording. He gets a very good shot of Eobard’s serene smile and the way Eobard turns his back and walks away.

Clearly he’s not very fond of Brittney.

It’s a common axiom that news travels fast, but while TV viewers at home and everyone in the blogosphere may be viewing Eobard’s opening salvo in real time, the herd of reporters actually present at STAR Labs are so focused on making the news that they’re disconnected from the fact that they’re _becoming_ the news. Eobard is free to move through the crowd, triangulating his victims with surgical precision.

The local ABC affiliate asks Eobard a question ostensibly about STAR Labs’ profit margin – “What’s it like to be someone who can afford to buy things which are not for sale?”, complete with suggestive wink – and has his entire insider trading scheme exposed in five succinct sentences. The ABC reporter’s camera operator likes him better than Brittney’s had liked her, and cuts the feed halfway through. The look on their faces, when they turn around and see the _Central City Crescent_ had snuck up behind them gotten the whole thing on B-roll, is priceless.

The _Crescent_ reporters are also smart enough to turn off their camera immediately afterwards, thank Eobard profusely for his invitation, and depart. Score one for local media, Eobard thinks, moving along.

They fall like wheat before the scythe. The Fox affiliate’s cameraman is into kiddie porn. The NBC pair are themselves blameless, but Eobard has no problem smiling into the camera and reminding the station director that first wife isn’t actually dead.

“What’s the penalty for bigamy?” Eobard asks idly, pretending to have forgotten.

“Up to five years, depending on the jurisdiction,” the reporter stammers.

“My, my.”

Finally, someone must check their Twitter app or yield to the furious pinging of their email client, and the news starts spreading through the crowd. Several reporters immediately pack up and leave, even though Eobard hasn’t spoken to them yet. Some of them Eobard hadn’t been _intending_ to speak to. Gideon will track that – there maybe something there that they haven’t found yet. The ones that stay are either brave or stupid. Eobard does notice that it’s predominantly print media who remain – people who have the advantage of being able to edit anything Eobard says to omit the unsavory. Slightly more likely to be brave than stupid, in those cases.

Slightly.

They clump up nervously, as if there is somehow safety in numbers. All faces turn towards Eobard, but no one wants to speak. Eobard notes with amusement that cameras are lying limp around reporters’ necks and audio recorders are stuffed hastily into pockets. It’s as if someone has turned the clock back a couple of decades; the room is full of reporters with pads of paper in their hands, pens and pencils poised. One of them, less prepared for the impromptu trip through time than the rest, is apparently getting ready to take down notes on the back of a STAR Labs promotional brochure.

 _Who says print is dead?_ Eobard thinks ironically.

There’s a slow ripple through the crowd, and someone pushes to the fore. It’s the representative of the _Central City Picture-News_. Not Iris, of course. She couldn’t be seen touching this event with a ten-foot pole. But she’d pulled a few strings and gotten Linda Park sent in her place. Eobard favors Linda with a gracious smile. Her return grin is positively wicked.

“Dr. Wells,” she calls. “A question?”

“Certainly, Ms. Park,” he replies, ostentatiously giving her his complete and total attention.

“You host expos like this rather often,” Linda begins. “When the particle accelerator was coming online for the first time, you were what I would call unusually accessible to the media.”

“In light of the concern about its environmental impacts, it seemed prudent,” Eobard says.

“That policy has garnered you a lot of media coverage,” Linda goes on. “In addition to being something of a favored son of the city, you enjoyed a positive relationship with the members of the press.”

“I did think we were on relatively good terms,” Eobard says regretfully. “I suppose it’s my own fault. What’s the saying? Something about thinking you really _are_ special to that stripper?”

There’s a collective gasp. The representatives of a dozen news outlets freeze like deer as they grapple individually with the fact that Eobard has just called them all, effectively, prostitutes.

Linda allows the moment to breathe before she raises her digital voice recorder. “Well, Dr. Wells,” she says, clear and serene, “I just wanted to ask, how do you foresee your relationship with the media going forward?”

* * *

It would be nice to say that Eobard strides out of STAR Labs after the impromptu press conference, like an avenging angel, and goes straight home to be fêted by those who love him most. Unfortunately, the real world intervenes. Sometimes Eobard wonders why, exactly, he’d chosen to adopt the role of a genius billionaire CEO. Or at least why he’d chosen to continue in it after his particle accelerator had given Barry his speed.

It’s not as if Barry has expensive tastes.

 _But you do,_ Eobard reminds himself, as, weary, he steps into the back of his private car. He’s almost too wrung out to run. Besides, if he weren’t seen publically leaving STAR Labs, it might be said that Dr. Wells had slunk out in secret disgrace – undoing much of today’s good work.

It’s true that Eobard has expensive tastes. But right now, what he wants most of all is free: being at home, with his Barry.

The car isn’t as fast as superspeed, but that’s all right; the drive gives Eobard time to take a few deep breaths, to relax his muscles and let the tension bleed out of him. The press event had been a battle, and no mistake about it, but not the kind where he’d had a useful outlet for his adrenaline. He knows from experience that he needs to vent it safely before he comes into contact with Iris or Barry again. With Iris it would lead to a fight, some foolish but sincerely-meant dominance game. With Barry it might lead to something worse. Either outcome is undesirable.

So Eobard leans back against the car’s leather seat and closes his eyes. He knows what to do, and he does it diligently.

When the car pulls up to the house, he opens them again, serene and centered.

He takes up his briefcase – de rigueur for the billionaire CEO, he’s found – and walks up the winding path to the house. The moment Eobard comes around the last curve, when the dense old growth of the surrounding forest has swallowed him up and no one from the outside world could possibly be watching, Barry flings open the front door and rushes headlong into Eobard’s arms.

Eobard drops the briefcase without a care and catches Barry gladly. Barry kisses him – not one long deep kiss but many kisses, fast and gold-tinged and eager.

“I watched it,” Barry says, between kisses. “I watched it all.”

Eobard pulls back, astonished – dismayed – even a little betrayed – but Barry puts a finger on his lips. “Iris came home for an hour,” he says. “Since she was going to stay at work all night, the CCPN let her come home for dinner. I watched the recordings with her. Not live. Not alone. She explained everything.” Barry smiles at Eobard. “You were magnificent.”

“You thought so?” Eobard’s hands drift to Barry’s waist, in spite of himself. There’s something about holding Barry by the hips, holding him close, that makes Eobard calmer – as if Barry somehow can’t run with Eobard holding him down. Foolish. But when it comes to Barry, Eobard is unashamedly a fool.

Barry picks up one of Eobard’s hands, though, and kisses it. “You didn’t hurt anyone,” he says, as if that explains it all.

And it does, a little, though Eobard still has to shake his head. “I hurt a great many people a great deal.”

“No,” Barry insists. “They hurt _themselves_ , by making those choices. You only exposed them. You didn’t hurt them any worse than they’d set themselves up for – you only gave them back what they tried to do to _us._ ”

“To you,” Eobard says, because he frankly doesn’t care, and never has, what a pack of ignorant barbarians think of him.

Barry’s smile deepens, and takes on a certain meaning. “I like that you think of me first,” he says, wriggling suggestively in Eobard’s arms.

“Iris went back to the CCPN?” Eobard checks, slowly drawing Barry closer. “I’m surprised they wanted her near this story.”

“I encouraged her to go back.” Barry snuggles in, resting more of his weight on Eobard. “This is a golden opportunity. Iris’ field tried to turn against her – even the CCPN carried the story, though they had a bit more decency about it. Now the story has turned on them. This is Iris’ moment to demonstrate exactly how much respect they had better show her from now on.”

Eobard looking at Barry with admiration. “That’s very sharp of you.”

Barry laughs. “And selfish. You see, you’ve taught me well. This is Iris’ moment; I want her to have it. And this is also your moment.” He leans closer, voice dropping. “And I wanted you to have me all to yourself tonight.”

Eobard’s breath hitches. He doesn’t have a chance to catch it before Barry calls on the Speed Force and whisks them both away.

* * *

Usually Barry is sweet, submissive, eager to please. Usually he likes to serve. Usually he wants to be taken control of.

Usually.

Tonight Barry puts Eobard on his back and climbs onto Eobard’s cock like he’d been born to take it. He sits on Eobard’s hips like they’re his throne and rides him like he’d been born to rule.

The name _Barry_ dies in Eobard’s throat before it has a chance to come out. But his lips refuse to shape _Flash_. The person in bed with Eobard isn’t quite either; he’s somewhere in between, Barry’s familiar form limned in the lightning of the Speed Force. He looks like a god. The only god Eobard has ever worshipped.

Barry puts his hands on Eobard’s body to hold Eobard where Barry wants him. He stares at Eobard and compels him to stillness with the sheer force of his gaze. He takes and gives pleasure in equal measure and doesn’t stop until they’re both sated and utterly wrung dry.

Then he curls up against Eobard as if it’s any other night. The sweetness is back in his smile, and in the soft kiss he gives Eobard.

“Barry?” Eobard dares to ask, putting an arm around his lover.

Barry yawns, and the lightning leaves his eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay now,” he tells Eobard with simple certainty. “Yes, there will be some clean-up, but it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

“Not if you say it doesn’t,” Eobard agrees.

Barry snuggles down, head pillowed on Eobard’s shoulder. “I’m going to go to sleep. Wake me up when Iris comes home. I want to kiss her goodnight.”

Eobard doesn’t stop himself from laughing. Mercurial as always, and capable of great faith – that’s Barry. _His_ Barry. The distant speed god has retreated, leaving the man behind. And Barry is smiling. Therefore he’s correct: everything _is_ going to be okay now.

“All right,” Eobard says fondly, and watches over Barry as Barry drifts off.


End file.
